CGI::Application is meant to be subclassed. This means that you're supposed to write a class that uses it as a starting point. When I write C::A apps, I actually have 2-3 levels of baseclasses. The first one is my global baseclass. It's my version of what C::A should do. This includes providing a print() method that dispatches between HTML::Template, Excel::Template, and PDF::Template. I see no reason why you shouldn't go ahead and provide a param()-type method in your global baseclass that will untaint the parameters as you need them. You could even link it with CGI::Untaint as so: